Unforgettable Mumbai

Mumbai’s centre offers plenty of evidence of the city’s vast riches, but abject poverty lurks just out of sight, finds Jan Burney.

Mumbai may be more notorious for poverty and slums than renowned as a retail paradise but spending a few hours in SoBo (South Bombay) in the heart of the city provides a different perspective.

Start with a coffee in Kala Ghoda cafe, which transforms into a sophisticated wine bar in the evenings and is one of countless hip hangouts in the area, its customers the usual mix of working-from-homers tapping on their laptops, yummy mummies and students eking out their flat whites.

Then pop upstairs to explore Nicobar, a sustainable clothing and lifestyle brand that sells organic cotton trousers, stripy kurtas, weekend bags and stylish homewares created by young Indian designers. In a spacious converted attic nearby, Le Mill displays elegant Indian fashion and furnishings alongside upmarket international brands like The Row and across the street, Cord showcases its minimalist leather handbags and handwoven silk separates.

The Mumbai Regal, one of the city’s many art deco cinemas

Next door is the legendary Trishna, Mumbai’s favourite seafood restaurant founded in 1930. Its menu of king prawns with 21 different sauce options, fresh jumbo crab and seafood biryani can seem bewildering but a regular clientele of locals, tourists and Bollywood celebrities testify to its reliably delicious and strikingly good value cuisine.

Nearby is Kitab Khana (House of Books) in a 150-year old heritage building, its galleried wooden interior stocking every genre of Indian and English literature at prices well below their British editions. A vegetarian cafe is tucked in one corner and the space also hosts a programme of music and theatre performances.

Amidst the maze of lanes in the neighbouring Fort area, stationery freaks can find nirvana at Chimanlals, with its walls covered in notepaper, cards, and collapsible wastepaper bins in richly decorated hand-made paper inspired by historical patterns like ikkat and paisley.

Add countless silk, jewellery and handicraft emporiums and it’s clear that Mumbai is shopping heaven, even if retail therapy involves negotiating uneven pavements lined with chaat stalls selling pani puri (deep-fried snacks), dosas and soft drinks. Pedestrians jostle for space amidst chai wallahs, fruit vendors, the odd swerving motorcycle and the insouciant dogs slumbering on every sidewalk. But there are surprisingly few beggars - probably no more than in Britain’s major cities - although Mumbai has the eighth biggest urban population in the world, with almost 21 million people in a city not much more than a third of the size of London. It’s also the twelfth richest city in the world, as taking tea or sipping a cocktail amongst the sophisticated and elegant patrons in the thrumming lobby, sumptuous lounges and poolside terraces of ‘The Taj’, grande dame of Mumbai’s luxury hotels, will illustrate.

The gilded domes of the Taj Palace, built in 1903 by the Parsi industrialist Jamshetji Tata (as in the motor, steel and technology conglomerate) to outdo in grandeur the colonial hotels that turned him away, gaze out over The Gateway of India to the Arabian Sea. The Gateway, an Indo-Islamic arch-monument was erected in 1911 to commemorate the landing of George V for his coronation as Emperor. He was the first British monarch to visit India, his grandmother, Queen Victoria, having never visited the jewel in her crown as the sea voyage was considered too much of a risk to her health. But for those who did descend the gangplanks of their ocean liners here in Apollo Bunder, the twin symbols of the Gateway and the Taj conveyed a first impression of power and luxury. Nowadays, the area comes alive at night when it transforms into a meeting point for the whole of Mumbai. Families, friends and holidaymakers come here to chat, drink tea, sing and perhaps find a space on the sea wall where courting couples can commune away from crowded family homes.

For the majority of today’s visitors who arrive by air, a taxi ride from the airport will provide a rather different initial impression, briefly confronting them with Mumbai’s poverty and homelessness. The route into the old centre now stretches along the Sea Link, an impressive eight-lane wide, five and a half kilometre long cable-stayed bridge that links south Mumbai with the western suburbs such as trendy Bandra, where many of the city’s coolest restaurants and bars are located. Closer to the airport, however, a glance out the window will reveal the world’s ‘third biggest slum’ of Dharavi, where over a million people live in an area of less than two and a half square kilometres on a former mangrove swamp now used as a dumping ground for construction industry garbage. Houses are built of cheap cement, corrugated iron and sheets of plastic though many inhabitants live in their workshops.

Some companies offer ‘Slumdog Millionare’ tours of Dharavi but the inhabitants prefer to ignore gawping tourists and get on with their working lives. Most are employed in recycling waste materials like plastic and metal to make domestic and electronic products or in sewing for the garment industry, including Zara, H&M and Giorgio Armani. Dharavi generates output worth almost one billion dollars a year but although the government frequently uses it as a ‘vote bank’, sanitation and housing remain inadequate and the average salary is just ten to twenty dollars a month. However, families ensure their children attend school and the literacy rate exceeds 69 per cent. Dharavi’s HDI (Human Development Growth Index) has also greatly improved in the last few years.

The route into central Mumbai continues along the three and a half kilometre curve of Marine Drive, ‘The Queen’s Necklace’. Described by Salman Rushdie as ‘a glittering art deco sweep’, some of its ‘mansions’ are luxurious and gleaming white, others greying and crumbled. After Miami, Mumbai has the world’s biggest area of art deco, a style most exuberantly expressed in the city’s cinemas. The recently restored Eros in central Churchgate is a 1938 streamline modern gem with its ziggurat roofline, curved marble staircase and gilded octagonal lift. Once a place of worship for Hollywood movie gods it’s now an IMAX theatre dedicated to the passionate romances and heroic exploits of Bollywood’s megastars.

Bollywood and Mumbai are indivisible and it’s not unusual to encounter film crews and even stars in the city’s streets and cafes. But real fans should visit Bollywood Park in Film City which offers a studio tour of extravagant movie sets, opportunities to watch live filming, dance shows and the chance to perform in costume and make-up. An alternative escape from the city’s crowds and all-day congestion is a visit to Gandhi’s house and museum in leafy Malabar Hill where a series of 3-D tableaux illustrate major events in the Mahatma’s life. Or further afield, the Sanjay Gandhi National Park on Mumbai’s northern border is a massive 104 square kilometre forest with nature trails, birdwatching, even overnight camping trips and lion and tiger safaris.

Closer to the city centre, popular Chowpatty Beach is a three and a half kilometre-long bay of golden sand although swimming is best restricted to the pools at the city’s higher-end hotels. Even more central, The Maidans (from the Persian for ‘open space’) is a 25-acre area of green with several pitches where local teams hold cricket practice from dawn till dusk. Nearby, the CSMVS Museum documents the entire history of India with sections dedicated to art, archaeology and natural history in an imposing Indo-Saracenic edifice. But the Maidans area is dominated by magnificent Victorian Gothic Revival architecture like Mumbai High Court and the university, considered one of George Gilbert Scott’s greatest works though he designed the entire complex from his office in London.

Like Victoria, Scott never visited Bombay thus missing out on an incomparable experience. A sunny city break in Mumbai may lack the predictable rhythms of siestas and sundowners but it does promise an abundance of unforgettable discoveries and delights.

Edinburgh to Mumbai flights with Qatar Airways start from around £400; rooms at the 5-star Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai start from £288 a night with booking.com; the 5-star Trident Nariman Point has rooms from £145 a night, the 5-star ITC Maratha rooms from £106 a night and 5-star J.W. Marriott rooms from £180 a night. All these hotels are centrally located and have excellent pool and spa facilities.